East St. Louis, Illinois

Table of Contents

The U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development describes East St. Louis as “the most distressed
small city in America” (Kozol, 7). Clearly a case of
environmental injustice, the city is 98 percent black and has one of the highest
rates of child asthma in the country. In his book Savage Inequalities,
Jonathan Kozol uncovers a disproportionate burden of lead poisoning, educational
disparities, unemployment, and toxic exposure among the residents of East
St. Louis. A deteriorating infrastructure and financial vulnerability further
weakens the fight against chemical industries within East St. Louis.

Along the southern edge of East St. Louis, chemical
plants such as Monsanto, Big River Zinc, Cerro Copper, and one of the largest
hazardous waste incineration companies in the U.S., American Bottom Sewage
Plant and Trade Waste Incineration, line impoverished neighborhoods. Nearly
a third of the residents live on less than $7,500 a year (Kozol,
7).

Hazardous
Waste Sites in East St. Louis, Illinois

*Red circles indicate the number of national priority
sites as mandated by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation,
and Liability Act (CERCLA). These sites pose the most significant potential
threat to human health due to their known or suspected toxicity and potential
for human exposure.

East St. Louis, located in west-Central Illinois across the Mississippi River
from St. Louis, Missouri, has suffered tremendous economic and environmental
setbacks. A booming town at the turn of the century, East St. Louis profited
greatly from centrally located rail freight facilities that distributed locally
produced chemicals. However, East St. Louis began to crumble when chemical
corporations created small, incorporated villages, such as Sauget and Cahokia,
protected from city taxing. Without an industrial tax base, middle class residents
took flight (Shaw).

Once a healthy community of 80,000 residents, East St. Louis quickly deteriorated
socioeconomically and scattered a surplus of vacant and poorly maintained
lots throughout the city. According to Kenneth Reardon, a professor in the
Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, “nearly 40 percent of the city’s land was either vacant
or unattended and 30 percent of its building stock was abandoned” by 1990
(1). Presently, the 38,000 remaining residents suffer from poor educational
systems, increased health risks, unemployment, and poverty (Bell, A1). The East St. Louis public school district is currently
ranked third to last in the state of Illinois.

Without tax revenues, East St. Louis began to close municipal agencies beginning
in the early 1970s. According to Kozol, garbage collection halted between
1987 and 1992, city employees were laid off, and police and fire department
suffered funding shortages. Besides the aforementioned examples of environmental
injustice, the community’s financial burdens have added to resident vulnerability
as well.

Key Actors

A powerful force in the chemical industry, Monsanto has emerged as one of
the three largest companies in the U.S and is “one of only four companies
to be listed among the top ten U.S. chemical companies in every decade since
the 1940s” (Tokar, 1). In the 1996 fiscal year, Monsanto
grossed more than $6 billion in profits with products such as Nutrasweet and
Round-Up.

Monsanto began producing polychlorinated Biphenyls or PCBs in the early 1930s
until its deadly effects were discovered forty years later. In the late 1940s,
Monsanto began manufacturing herbicide 2,4,5-T. An internal memo made public
in 1987 indicated that large amounts of dioxin, a by-product of PCBs and a
known carcinogen, were disposed in the East St. Louis area. According to the
EPA’s 1995 Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), Monsanto ranked fifth among U.S.
corporations in toxic releases with 37 million pounds of toxic chemicals discharged
annually (Tokar, 6).

In a 1990 EPA memorandum, Dr. Cate Jenkins of the EPA’s Regulatory Development
Branch declared that “Monsanto has in fact submitted false information to
EPA which directly resulted in weakened regulations under RCRA [Resources
Conservation and Recovery Act]…” (Tokar, 4). In his article
“Monsanto: A Checkered History,” Brian Tokar furthers these allegations with
charges of faulty comparative health studies and efforts to submit prepared
samples to the EPA with no evidence of dioxin contamination (4). Currently,
Monsanto’s compliance with the EPA remains in violation.

On May 31, 2000, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered Monsanto
to remove sediments contaminated with high levels of PCBs and dioxin from
Dead Creek. The EPA placed Dead Creek on a National Priority List (NPL) because
hazardous waste jeopardized state and federally protected endangered species.
Eventually feeding into the Mississippi River, EPA officials also worried
that the migration of hazardous substances from Dead Creek would affect commercial
fishing. (See EPA News Release). According to Kozol, the
chemical discharges found in Death Creek concerned residents as early as 1991,
at the time of his book’s publication. The creek that “smokes by day and glows
on moonless nights has gained some notoriety in recent years for instances
of spontaneous combustion” when children create the necessary friction from
riding bikes across the creek bed (17).

In 1997, Fortune ranked Pfizer the world's most admired pharmaceutical
company, and Forbes magazine named Pfizer "Company of the Year."
Established 150 years ago, Pfizer is one of the world's leading pharmaceutical
companies, accredited for its success in discovering and manufacturing inventive
drugs for humans and animals. Pfizer Inc. is a research-based company that
serves people around the world in more than 150 countries. The company has
a threefold focus: health care, animal health and consumer health care. (See
Pfizer web site).

The EPA’s mandated Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), a database which provides
information to the public about releases of toxic chemicals from manufacturing
facilities into the environment, provides a listing of hazardous waste sites.
Those sites with the highest “score” receive greatest priority and are place
on the National Priority List (NPL). In the East St. Louis community, two
hazardous waste sites have been identified for the NPL. One site contains
waste from Pfizer (http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu/la/LA338-S98/kfeld/hazard.html ).

Pfizer NPL Site on Lynch Avenue in East St. Louis, Illinois

Interestingly enough, a recent
Pfizer publication of the Environment, Health, and Safety Report (1999)
indicates little accountability for inadequate waste management practices in
East St. Louis:

In the past, however, our use of certain U.S. waste disposers
led to some instances of soil and groundwater contamination at their facilities.
Under the U.S. law commonly knows as “Superfund,” Pfizer and other industrial
companies are responsible for the cost to clean up this contamination, even
though someone else caused it. We have agreed to pay approximately
87 percent of our estimated Superfund costs. (1999)

If anything, Pfizer’s reputation is far from perfect. Between
1996 and 1998, the EPA fined Pfizer nearly $900,000 for violations involving
the Clean Water Act, the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act,
and the Conservation and Recovery Act (See Environment, Health, & Safety
Report).

Big River Zinc

A subsidiary of Korea Zinc Co., Ltd., Big River Zinc produces and distributes
zinc metal in Sauget, Illinois. Just one of the many towns developed to escape
property taxes in East St. Louis, Big River Zinc has a replacement value in
excess of $200 million. Big River sells approximately 92,000 tons of zinc
per year as well as 130,000 tons of commercial grade sulfuric acid and 1,000
tons of cadmium oxide per year. Whereas sulfuric acid is used in the manufacturing
of fertilizers, detergents, and pharmaceutical products, cadmium oxide can
be found in plastics or porcelain enamel. In 1996, Big River initiated an
Improvement Program to expand capacity to 117,000 ton of zinc metal per year.

According to Big River Zinc’s web site, the plant’s water treatment system
collects, purifies, and neutralizes contaminated water before it leaves the
plant. Additionally, Big River professes to safe and environmentally friendly
disposal practices of hazardous wastes in accordance with state and federal
laws. However, on December 3, 1997, EPA’s Region 5 filed a complaint against
Big River Zinc alleging that the corporation had failed to notify the Emergency
Response Commission and the Chicago Local Emergency Planning Committee of
hazardous waste releases. Furthermore, the EPA alleged that Big River Zinc
violated numerous industry restrictions:

· Failure to properly store certain hazardous wastes

· Failure to submit the required notification of treatment technology
in use at a facility, as well as, failure to keep required records regarding
such treatment technology

· Failure to satisfy certain requirements of a generator storing
hazardous waste 90 days or less without a permit” as well as other violations

Headquartered in Sauget, Illinois, Cerro Copper is one
of the largest manufacturers of domestic copper tubes—a product necessary
for plumbing, heating, and air conditioning. More than 200 million pounds
of copper tube is needed annually for the plumbing market. In a process that
recycles and refines copper scrap to produce copper tube, Cerro uses a fully
integrated mill that combines copper refining and tube manufacturing. However,
Cerro Copper uses a toxic smelting process to manufacture copper tubes (Cerro
Copper web site).

On December 5, 1997, the EPA Regional Administrator approved Illinois’ plan
to reduce organic compound emissions in the Chicago and East St. Louis areas
by 15%. Through reductions in gasoline vapor emissions and controls on industrial
sources, emissions have fallen by 38 tons per day in East St. Louis. Three
days earlier, EPA officials attended a meeting with local citizens. According
to the EPA, the information gathered will be used to evaluate environmental
concerns.

Faculty and students from the Department of Urban & Regional Planning,
the Department of Landscape Architecture, and the School of Architecture at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have joined East St. Louis
neighborhood groups to address the immediate and long-term needs of East St.
Louis residents. Since its inception in 1990, ESLARP has played a crucial
role in attempts at neighborhood revitalization. Using various university
and social service resources to address economic and environmental problems,
ESLARP and community members have found success in East St. Louis.

NTAC seeks to provide organizational, planning, and design assistance
to residents and neighborhood organizations especially in the areas of community
organizing, neighborhood planning, building and urban design, grant writing,
and non-profit management (ESLARP site).

Demographics

The demographics of East St. Louis have changed drastically since the 1960s.
Not only has the population split in half, but the African-American population
has skyrocketed from 45 percent to 98.1 percent in the 1990 U.S. census. The
average income for an East St. Louis family went from $15,927 in 1959 to $12,627
in 1989, whereas national averages totaled $18,426 in 1959 and more than $30,000
in 1989. Today, the median household income stands at $14,644, a figure nearly
half the state average. Additionally, property collection tax is one-fourth
what it was in 1970 (Tokar).
(Taken from U.S. Census)

As of 1990, about 40 percent of the population lived below the poverty line
(Bell, A1). Unemployment nears 30 percent. The northern
end of East St. Louis, in zip code 62204, is the worst of 124 zip codes in
St. Louis, St. Clair, and Madison Counties. Half of the residents live in
poverty, 75 percent live on welfare and two out of five children are born
to a teenager (Peterson, A1).

(Taken from U.S. Census)

Racial Demographics of East St. Louis, Illinois

(U.S.
Census)

Educational
Attainment for Residents of East St. Louis Illinois
25 Years and Older

·Community Revitalization:
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo and President Bill Clinton
sponsored a $3 million Empowerment Zone grant to four of St. Louis area’s
poorest communities, including East St. Louis. In July of 1999, Clinton and
Cuomo met with local officials to support “a roadmap for community revitalization
that local governments, businesses, and community groups will follow to stimulate
economic growth and job creation” (HUD Press Release, 7/6/99)

·Casino Development:
In an effort to revitalize the economic turmoil of East St. Louis, Governor
Jim Edgar granted the city one of four riverboat gambling licenses in 1994.
The “Casino Queen” employs 1,200 and pays approximately $10 million in taxes
toward city improvements. However, according to an article in The Economist,
the funds have only provided minor improvements—such as traffic lights, consistent
waste pick-up for residents, and new radios for police dispatchers (27).

·Federal Involvement:
Considering the budget constraints of East St. Louis, the federal government
has declared full management of the city’s public housing and has offered
support to the police department as well (The Economist, 27).

·State Involvement:
Condemning East St. Louis for poor local management, Governor Jim Edgar
began to monitor the city’s finances and, in 1994, took full control of the
public schools (The Economist, 27).

Ø
The Urban Extension Minority Access Program was initiated in 1987 when
State Representative Younge requested the assistance of the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for revitalization efforts within the East St.
Louis area. The first endeavor was the School of Architecture’s East St. Louis
Revitalization Project. This effort included riverfront development, street
lighting, industrial and railroad development, and stormwater retention (ESLARP
site).

Ø
In 1998, the Neighborhood Based Family Housing Program piloted the first “Blitz
Build” and actively engaged hundreds of volunteers in an effort to provide
affordable housing to local families. Within a span of three weeks, two new
homes were built. These special homes were eventually sold to families at
no profit and financed with affordable loans. In collaboration with other
neighborhood organizations and church groups, the Neighborhood Based Family
Housing Program hope to build 25 homes over the next five years.